#listen if you sit there and criticize the jedi in the notes of my posts i will block you at this point

[antianakin]

Love how people are SHOCKED when they come on a Pro Jedi blog and criticize the Jedi for particularly heinous bullshit and the Pro Jedi person gets defensive and upset in response.

Wow, no one could have seen that coming.

[bylightofdawn]

WIP Sunday

Woof I barely made this in time. I'd made a snarky comment about how WIP Sunday doesn't need to be 1200 words and then turned around and am offering 1800+ words. I am an actual clown. This one is a very rough ride, NGL.

Slick and Cody are both super angry and being enormous dicks to one another. And I know some idiot reader is going to read this and prolly accuse me of demonizing the Jedi because of Slick's very loud and critical takes on the Jedi. Just like...ignoring that is the character traits he's been given in canon. And maybe I'm being a little harsh labeling them as being an idiot but strawman tumblr arguments or ones made deliberately taking things in the worst amount of bad faith whilst ignoring the nuance of the topic is exhausting and I don't have the time or patience to engage in that bullshit.

So please, don't come for my throat, I don't espouse his radical ideals even if I do understand his message wasn’t completely wrong if you squint and turn your head to the side. Though at the end of the day, at its core it’s still very much a bad faith straw man argument.

As always this is super rough, has not even begun to be edited and I will prolly change it before it actually gets posted yadda yadda

When Cody came to, it was a confusing and slow process as his sluggish brain struggled to interpret and process what was going on. He was laying on a soft surface, the softest surface he’d felt in weeks of sleeping on duracrete with the thinest of threadbare blankets for padding.

His brain recognized it as a bed and noted the other subtle changes such as the fact that his arm didn’t feel completely on fire. He still felt like he’d been run over by a Walker but in comparison to how he’d felt earlier, even with the low-grade headache that always accompanied being stunned, he still felt markedly better.

Then the realize he’d been stunned set in and the memory of Slick standing over him glowering returned and Cody immediately tried to sit up only to find himself impeded by the fact he seemed to be strapped down to the bed.

When he looked down, it didn’t appear to be traditional binders so much as hastily tied rope and even strips of fabric in places. This gave Cody some hope because, with enough work, he might be able to squirm and wiggle enough to loosen the knots enough he could make his escape.

“Calm down, Commander. Those are just to make sure you don’t try and attack me while we’re talking.” Slick’s voice came from the foot of the bed, and the unfriendly-looking clone stood there, having appeared seemingly out of nowhere with his arms crossed over his chest.

“What the hell is this, Slick?”

“Some would classify it as helping though I doubt you’ll appreciate the amount of effort it took for me to cart your unconscious ass all the way back here.”

“Where is here?” Cody just glossed over that complaint, refusing to even acknowledge it.

“My ship, clearly.”

Cody couldn’t quite mask his inhale of shock as that news reached his ears. How the hell had Slick managed to pull that off?

“How…how are you not rotting in a prison cell right now?”

The other clone’s expression shuttered before his eyes and he was suddenly completely unreadable. “That’s really not any of your business.”

“Cut the bantha poodoo. You clearly escaped somehow but you actually seem to be thriving.”

“Ah, so you’re jealous I found my feet as a free man while you quite literally rotted away in some lower-level death trap.” Slick mused with an edge of vicious satisfaction. “I guess all those years of kissing the boots of your Jedi master didn’t really teach you any useful skills for anything beyond being a soldier.”

Anger kindled in Cody’s heart in the face of those taunting words. “If you think I give a whit for the words of a traitor, you’re vastly overestimating yourself.”

“Of course not. You’ve always been a sanctimonious prick. If you’d listened to me all those years ago on Christophis maybe you wouldn’t have to lead your men into literal slavery courtesy of the Empire.”

“You-” Cody looked absolutely apoplectic as white-hot rage welled within him and the sudden need to find a way to free himself and punch this shabuir in the mouth repeatedly until he couldn’t spew his bantha shit suffused his entire being. He started to yank at the bindings holding him to the bed with rage-fueled aggression.

He wanted to feel an ounce of satisfaction when Slick started to look at him warily and his hand drifted down to the butt of his blaster. Cody didn’t want to get stunned a second time in one day but if had even the tiniest of chances to punch Slick in the fact, he’d take that tradeoff.

“You don’t get to speak to me about Christophis ever. You betrayed your brothers and fellow soldiers and assisted the people trying to kill us. You got your brothers killed!”

“I’m a traitor for refusing to assist the bastards who enslaved us and used us as literal cannon fodder in their bantha shit war? Over more territory they were trying to steal from people who refused to give in to their expansionist ideals!”

“We weren’t slaves!”

“We were you’ve just got your head so far up your ass you cannot even recognize that even now, we’re still slaves. The Jedi and the Republic had years to fix our situation. To pass legislation to give us personhood, but instead, that was too damned inconvenient because Little Gods forbid their meat droid soldiers to get radial ideas like not wanting to perpetuate their bloody wars on the backs of their dying brothers.”

“Sithspit, you’re just trying to justify your selfish actions during the war!”

“The same could be said for you, vod.” Slick spat that word like it was venomous or unclean. “You’re just as complicit in the slavery of your own brothers. You should have been advocating for us from the start. If even a handful of you kriffing Clone Marshals had put your foot down and fought for us then maybe we wouldn’t be in this position now where our brothers are being treated as the actual property of the Empire.”

Those words hit especially hard, and Cody couldn’t suppress his flinch when they struck true and dug bloody barbs in his heart. Slick’s words only echoed the things that had been running through his mind for months now.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He said somewhat lamely.

“I know firsthand what I’m talking about. You wondered how I escaped prison? I didn’t, the Empire gathered all of us imprisoned clones and were going to ship us off to some place where they were probably going to dissect or experiment on us. It was sheer luck that they got intercepted by a cell of brothers who were freeing us before we could disappear into an Imperial blacksite.” Slick stated flatly, his expression and eyes deadly serious.

“If Captain Howzer and his men hadn’t found us, I doubt I’d be alive.”

Cody’s eyes went wide with shock. “Howzer is alive? I thought we’d lost him on Ryloth.”

“Nope, he questioned his masters too much, and they threw him in an Imperial prison. He was going to suffer a fate similar to mine when he was rescued by a team of rogue clones rescuing other clones. That’s what I’ve been doing for the past few months. Trying to find and rescue as many brothers as I can and getting them off of Coruscant and out of Imperial captivity.”

Cody found himself frowning as he ceased pulling at his bindings. He hadn’t heard anything about this in his time. There had been a marked increase of clones who had defected, and he’d chalked it up to them getting fed up with the Empire as he had.

Maybe some of them had ended up being exfiltrated by clones like Slick, of all people. For some reason, that thought unsettled him to his very core.

“And what? Now you’re suddenly a freedom fighter trying to rescue as many clones as possible?” He didn’t even bother to try and mask his skepticism.

“I’ve always been a freedom fighter for our brothers. And unlike you lot living in your lofty towers above the rest of us, I’ve actually been making effective changes in the lives of our brothers.”

“I’m sure you thought of our brothers when you took Ventress’s blood money.”

Slick’s jaw went tight enough that the muscles in it bunched up as he bit down on his molars hard enough he very nearly broke them.

“Yes, I karked up, I’m man enough to admit that, unlike certain people in this room. But I spent nearly three years enjoying Republic hospitality, I won’t rest until every clone has been rescued from Imperial captivity. Including sanctimonious little shits like yourself.”

“I’m sure you’re doing this from the kindness of your own heart and not because you’re playing yet another angle.”

“You could never understand my reasoning because even now, you continue to propagate this myth that the Jedi were these wholesome, perfect people who could do no wrong. Rather than facing the truth that they let us remain enslaved because it was convenient for their war efforts, and even if they were sympathetic to our situation, they still stood aside for three years. They didn’t advocate for us in any way.”

“You’re completely wrong about the Jedi. They did try and improve the lives of clones and were fighting for our rights. The damned Senate wouldn’t listen.”

“Then maybe you Clone Marshals should have kriffing done something. If you’d refused to follow their orders and stopped fighting their war, they would have had to do something. Instead, you licked their boots like good little akk hounds until their fragile house of cards came tumbling down. Despite the fact their own brothers and sisters were wasting clone lives and even turning us against one another. Do you really think a mudscuffer like Pong Krell was the only Jedi to abuse his authority?”

“How could you possibly know about Pong Krell?”

“From a rookie I met in lockup of course. He actually did something proactive to protect his brothers by shooting that traitorous sleemo and what does he get for his courageous act? Life in prison? Execution? Yeah, your Jedi masters were truly the epitome of kindness and fairness.”

“Dogma murdered his superior officer. And Kenobi and the other Jedi were torn to pieces by what happened along with the rest of us. They fought to keep him from being decommissioned.”

“By locking him in a hole and throwing away the key. Truly, compassion at its finest.”

“I’m not saying what happened to Dogma was fair. It was a karked situation all around. Everyone was devastated by what happened on Umbara. I personally lost one of my closest friends to Krell’s treachery.”

“My heart weeps for you.” Slick drawled scornfully.

“Kark you.”

“Not even if you were the last sentient being in the universe. We all lost friends and batchmates in that damn war.”

“Which makes what you did ten times worse. How much different are you from the likes of Pong Krell, huh? You both betrayed our brothers for Sep blood money. At least Krell was honest about how karked his motivations were while you try and justify your actions like you’re some freedom fighter for the clones.”

Something dark and angry flashed in Slick’s eyes. “I’m done wasting my breath trying to talk any sense into you.” The blaster came up again and Cody didn’t even have a chance to try and flinch away from the blaster bolt. Bright blue energy enveloped him as the stun bolt hit him, and sent him back into the blackness of unconsciousness for the second time today.

[inquisitorhotpants]

Family Business

Kryn does not take it lightly when someone hurts one of her sisters, and no amount of time passed will lessen her ire.  

The years-old recording of Lysch disappears, and Kryn sits back, tapping manicured nails in a slow, deliberate rhythm against the polished wood of her desk. After a long moment she reaches out, touching the glowing keys projected on the flat surface. She taps one last key with finality but doesn’t move from her chair, staring unseeing into the darkness outside her study window.

It is finally time.

--

It isn’t so much a sunny day as it is a slightly less rainy day with a valiant attempt at sunlight that finds five of the eight Sartoris sisters - all but Lysch, Raitlia, and Zal’shana - piled in a luxury speeder gracefully weaving its way through the traffic in the Capital District, bound for the Ministry of War.

“Can we get a mission brief?” Rafana asks, flicking a non-existent speck of dust off her pristine white boot. “I am entirely in the dark here.”

“Lysch fell in love, some time ago,” Kryn says, nodding at the several gasps that follow this pronouncement. “And he betrayed her. I’ve been waiting for the right time to deal with this, and that time has come.”

Rafana’s expression hardens. “I assume we’re killing him. I’m prepared, but I’d have preferred to do this at night; do keep that in mind for next time. I’ll doctor the holo feeds and no one will ever know we were here.” She checks a number of places on her clothing, then pulls a tiny datapad out of her pocket. “How long do I have to get these feeds down?”

Kryn shakes her head. “Sadly, that’s not why we’re here. Lysch’s orders from when she first told me. All we’re here to do is reiterate that this is his last reprieve.” She easily maneuvers to a landing pad near the large central doors of the Ministry.

“Majesty! My lords.” The attendant, dressed in an impeccable uniform, bows crisply. “Can I direct you?”

“I know where I’m going, Corporal. Thank you.” Kryn strides away, her cape billowing behind her and her sisters trailing in her wake. After leading them through what feels like a maze of hallways, she consults her datapad, then a map on the wall. “Ah, we’re close.”  Four doors down the hallway, she stops. “Let me do the talking. You just stand behind me and look stern.”

She slaps a hand on the entry pad of the door, stopping at the desk positioned in the center of the room. “I would speak with Major Quinn.”

The secretary looks up, his eyes going wide. “Do you - that is, my lord, do you have an appointment? The major is currently speaking with -”

“Perhaps you are unaware of proper custom,” Kryn says, laying her palms flat on the desk, her multitude of rings twinkling in the overhead light. “But Imperials make time for me, not the other way around.” Before the sergeant can respond, Kryn straightens. “The major will see me now. Your assistance is not required. I am fully capable of announcing myself.”

With this, she breezes past the sergeant, now standing ramrod straight and staring at a point in the middle distance as the five stern women file past him.

The door slides open, and Quinn looks up from the diagrams he’s showing the minister of war, the only sign of irritation a furrow on his forehead and narrowed blue eyes. “Sergeant, I told you that I wasn’t to be -”

“Minister,” Kryn says, ignoring Quinn. “I have pressing business with the major. Do excuse us.” She folds her arms across her chest and raises one eyebrow.

The minister of war swivels in his chair, eyes widening when he sees Kryn. “Majesty! Yes, absolutely!” He picks up his datapad and marches smartly out of the office, closing the door behind him.

Quinn resists the urge to drum his gloved hand’s fingertips on the top of his desk, his features smoothing into neutrality with the ease of long practice. “How may I be of assistance, Majesty?” He scans the other four women, almost imperceptibly, taking note of blasters and lightsabers and signs of rank. One, a cyborg with a fondness for shocking fuschia lipstick, is all but bristling with a weapon collection a Mandalorian would envy. The Mirialan is only wearing one blaster, but he didn’t miss how she cracked her knuckles when they came in. The human with the long, glossy black hair hasn’t taken her hand off her lightsaber hilt since his office door opened. The Rattataki is the hardest to read; if she’s not in Intelligence, he’ll eat his dress cap.

He can think of only one reason a squad of angry, deadly women would be standing in his office, though he is nominally surprised the Wrath is not doing the honors herself. In truth, he’d hoped he’d fallen off her radar, even though he knows that’s nothing but a pipe dream. One does not betray the Wrath and then escape her notice.

“Did Lysch send you?”

Nox snaps her fingers. “Do not speak my sister’s name. You lost that privilege when you betrayed her.”

Quinn nods, betraying no surprise at Darth Nox calling the Wrath her sister. There have been stranger Sith customs. “Did the Wrath send you?”

“No.”

He waits; when Darth Nox doesn’t continue, he indicates the recently-vacated chair. “Please sit, Darth Nox. If you like, I can have Sergeant Traxio bring seats for your companions.”

“This is hardly a social call.”

“I suppose you want me to sit here and dutifully listen,” he says, a touch more acerbic than he intends, but Nox seems intent on dragging this out and he has an agenda to keep to.

“Want?” A soft, almost angelic smile graces Darth Nox’s face. “I want you to be drummed out of the military and left in disgrace in the undercity,” she says, her smile utterly at odds with the ice in her voice, “because I think death is too kind a repayment for betraying my sister after you told her you loved her. However, she placed you in a mission-critical posting and I value the Empire’s security more than the visceral satisfaction I would derive from seeing your entire life in ruins.”

“The Wrath is -” Quinn pales. Does she mean sister sister? Having the Wrath as an enemy is bad enough, but the Empress, too?

“My sister. Know with absolute certainty that it is only through her intercession that you are still breathing.”

He considers his words, inhales slowly. “Please convey -”

“I will convey nothing to her from you, and I might suggest,” she continues as though he hadn’t spoken, the smile falling off her face, “that you pray every day to any deity who might deign to acknowledge your existence that I forget about this by the time you retire.”

“Yes, my lord.” He pauses, then turns his attention to each of the other women. “Possibly against my better judgment, I would feel remiss in not asking if anyone else has anything to add?”

The other Sith - at least, Quinn thinks she’s a Sith, if only because no Jedi would dare set foot in Kaas City - shakes her head.

The Rattataki slides her datapad back into a pocket on her thigh, eyeing him in silence long enough that he can’t help but adjust in his chair.

The Mirialan and the cyborg exchange a long glance, then nod. “Nox may be all poetic and shit, being a Sith,” the cyborg says, red armor gleaming, “but we’re a lot more direct. You fuck up, and every bounty hunter in the galaxy will be after you for the price I put on your head, and their only real challenge will be to get to you before the two of us do.”

“Nothing personal,” the Mirialan says. “Just family business.”

Quinn had wondered in the past why Lysch had never told him anything about her family; looking at the group in front of him, it starts to make some sense. The Wrath represents the pinnacle of the Sith, chosen by the Emperor himself, and it wouldn’t do for the Empire to know her family appears to be a ragtag bunch of aliens who seem quite prone to violence.

“Duly noted.”

Darth Nox steps forward, bracing herself against the desk and leaning toward him. “Do continue to be a faithful, devoted servant of the Empire, Major Quinn. The Emperor and I will be watching your career most closely.”

As a child, already plotting the career path he wanted, he’d dreamed of being recognized by the Emperor. It was the daydream he turned to when the rest of his platoon went out carousing and he stayed back, the one he turned to as he watched Broysc torpedo his promotion chances, the one he turned to as he languished on Balmorra.

He never expected that if this daydream came true, it would send a frisson of fear down his spine.

Nox straightens, spinning sharply enough that her cape billows out around her. “Good day, Major. Ladies, shall we?”

[uomo-accattivante]

Oscar Isaac in the role of painter Paul Gauguin is trouble you see coming from a mile away—the kind you live to regret falling for anyway.

He’s a holier-than-thou painting bro with a “slightly misanthropic” streak (Isaac’s generous wording), eyes glinting with disgust in his first close-up. Pipe in one hand, book in another, dressed all black save for an elegant red scarf, he slams a table and shames the Impressionists gathered around him: “They call themselves artists but behave like bureaucrats,” he huffs after a theatrical exit. “Each of them is a little tyrant.”

From a few tables away, another painter, Vincent van Gogh, watches in awe. He runs into the street after Gauguin like a puppy dog.

Within a year, a reluctant Gauguin would move in with van Gogh in a small town in the south of France, in the hope of fostering an artists’ retreat away from stifling Paris. Eight emotionally turbulent weeks later, van Gogh would lop off his left ear with a razor, distraught that his dearest friend planned to leave him for good. He enclosed the bloody cartilage in wrapping marked “remember me,” intending to have it delivered to Gauguin by a frightened brothel madam as a bizarre mea culpa. The two never spoke again.

Or so the last two years of Vincent van Gogh’s life unspool in Julian Schnabel’s At Eternity’s Gate, itself a kind of lush, post-Impressionistic memoir of the Dutchman’s tormented time in Arles, France. (Not to mention artistically fruitful time: Van Gogh churned out 200 paintings and 100 watercolors and sketches before the ear fiasco landed him in an insane asylum.)

Isaac plays Gauguin like an irresistibly bad boyfriend, a bemused air of condescension at times wafting straight into the audience: “Why’re you being so dramatic?” he scoffs directly into the camera, inflicting a first-person sensation of van Gogh’s insult and pain.

Yet in the painter’s artistic restlessness, Isaac, 37, sees himself: “That desire to want to do something new, to want to push the boundaries, to not just settle for the same old thing and get so caught up with the minutia of what everyone thinks is fashionable in the moment.” He talks about “staying true to your own idea of what’s great.” He talks about “finding something honest.”

From another actor, the sentiment might border on banal. But Oscar Isaac—Guatemalan-born, Juilliard-trained and, in his four years since breaking through as film’s most promising new leading man, christened superlatives from “this generation’s Al Pacino” to the “best dang actor of his generation”—might really have reason to mean what he says. He’s crawling out the other end of a life-altering two years, one that’s encompassed personal highs, like getting married and becoming a father, and an acutely painful low: losing a parent.

He basked in another Star Wars premiere, mined Hamlet for every dimension of human experience, and weathered the worst notices of his career with Life Itself. Through it all, he says, he’s spent a lot of time in his head—reevaluating who he is, what he wants, and what matters most.

Right now, he’s aiming for a year-long break from work, his first in a decade, after wrapping next December’s Star Wars: Episode IX. “I’m excited to, like Gauguin, kind of step away from the whole thing for a bit and focus on things that are a bit more real and that matter to me,” he says.

Until then, he’s just trying “to keep moving forward as positively as I can,” easing into an altered reality. “You’re just never the same,” he says quietly. “On a cellular level, you’re a completely different person.”

When we talk, Isaac is in New York for one day to promote and attend the New York Film Festival premiere of At Eternity’s Gate. Then it’s back on a plane to London, where Pinewood Studios and Star Wars await.

Episode IX, the last of Disney’s new Skywalker trilogy, will see Isaac reprise the role of dashing Resistance pilot Poe Dameron, whose close relationship with Carrie Fisher’s General Leia evokes joy but also melancholy after Fisher’s untimely passing.

Each film was planned in part as a celebration and send-off to each of the original trilogy’s most beloved heroes: in The Force Awakens, Han Solo (Harrison Ford); in The Last Jedi, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill); Fisher, meanwhile, had hoped to save Leia’s spotlight for last but passed unexpectedly long before filming began. Director J.J. Abrams, returning to close the trilogy he opened with Episode VII, has since said that unseen footage of Fisher from that previous film will ensure the General appears, however briefly.

For his part, Isaac promises the still-untitled ninth film will pay appropriate homage to Leia—and to Fisher’s sense of fun. “The story deals with that quite a bit,” he says. “It’s a strange thing to be on the set and to be speaking of Leia and having Carrie not be around. There’s definitely some pain in that.” Still, he says, compared to the first two installments, “there’s a looseness and an energy to the way that we’re shooting this that feels very different.”

“It’s been really fun being back with J.J., with all of us working in a really close way. I just feel like there’s an element of almost senioritis, you know?” he laughs. “Since everything just feels way looser and people aren’t taking it quite as seriously, but still just having a lot of fun. I think that that energy is gonna translate to a really great movie.”

Fisher’s absence is felt keenly on set, Isaac says. As if to reassure us both, however, he reiterates: “It deals with the amazing character that Carrie created in a really beautiful way.”

Two months after Fisher’s death, Isaac’s mother, Eugenia, passed away after an illness. A month after that, the actor married his girlfriend, the Danish documentarian Elvira Lind. Another month later, the couple welcomed their first son, named Eugene to honor the little boy’s grandmother. Work offered a way for a reeling Isaac to process.

There was his earth-shaking run at Hamlet, in which Isaac starred as the titular prince in mourning at New York’s Public Theater. And then there was writer-director Dan Fogelman’s Life Itself, a film met with reviews that near-unanimously recoiled from its “cheesy,” “overwrought” structure, filled with what one critic called the genuine emotion of “a damage-control ExxonMobil commercial.”

The reaction surprised Isaac. “I thought it was some of my strongest work,” he says. “Especially at that moment in my life. This guy is dealing with grief and, for me, it was a really honest way of trying to understand those emotions and to create a character who was also going through just incomprehensible grief.” He’s proud of the performance—and, in a strange way, heartened by the sour critical response.

“To be honest,” he says brightly, “there was something really comforting about it.” That the work “for me, meant something and for others, didn’t at all, it just made the whole thing not matter so much in a great way.”

“I was able to explore something and come out the other end and feel like I grew as an actor,” he explains. “That matters to me a lot. And the response to that, you know, it’s interesting of course, but it was a great example for me of how it really doesn’t dictate how I then feel about what I did.”

He thinks for a moment of performances and projects that, conversely, embarrassed him—ones that to his shock, boasted “really great notices” in the end. “You just never know, you know? It’s completely out of my control.”

Isaac is an encouraging listener in conversation, doling out interested yeahs and uh-huhs, and often warm, self-deprecating laughter. When I broach a particularly personal subject, he seems to sit up—somehow, suddenly more present. It’s about his last name.

Óscar Isaac Hernández Estrada dropped both surnames before enrolling at Juilliard in 2001. He’d run into several Óscar Hernándezes at auditions by that point, and taken note of the stereotypes casting directors seemed to have in mind for them—gangsters, drug dealers, the works. So he made a change, not unlike many actors do.

Whether Óscar Hernández might have had a crack at the astonishingly diverse roles Oscar Isaac has inhabited, we’ll never know. But given Hollywood’s limiting tendencies, it’s less likely he might have played an English king for Ridley Scott in 2010’s Robin Hood, three years before his breakthrough role as a cantankerous folk singer in Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis. He was an Armenian genocide survivor in last year’s The Promise, an Israeli secret agent in August’s Operation Finale, and now, he’s the Frenchman Paul Gauguin.

Star Wars’ Poe Dameron, meanwhile, or the mysterious tech billionaire in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina, or the army commando in his second Garland mind-twist, Annihilation, specify no ethnicities at all. It’s the dream: to be hailed as a great actor, period, and not a “great Latino actor” first. To be appreciated for your talent, and seen as “other” rarely at all.

There’s a crawl space between those distinctions, though, where another anxiety lives. The one that makes you wonder: Am I “representing” as loudly as I should? Am I obligated to do so in my work? If I don’t, what does that make me? Questions for when you grew up in Miami, or another Latino-dominant place, reckoning with how you’re perceived in a spotlight outside of it. Isaac listens attentively. Then for several unbroken minutes, talks it out with himself.

He rewinds to yesterday, when he boarded a plane from London on which an air steward addressed him repeatedly as “señor,” unbidden. “It was just a little weird. So I started calling him ‘señor’ as well. I was like, thank you, señor!” Isaac recalls, cracking up. “But then at the same time, I had that thought. I was like, but no, I should really, you know, be proud of being a señor, I guess?”

“I think for a lot of immigrants, the idea is that you don’t always just want to be thought of as other. Like, I don’t want him to be just calling me ‘señor.’ Why?” he asks, more of the steward than himself. “Because I look like I do, so I’m not a mystery anymore? It did bring up all those kinds of questions.”

He grew up in the United States, he explains; his family came over from Guatemala City when Isaac was 5 months old. “I’m most definitely Latino. That’s who I am. But at the same time, for an actor it’s like, I want to be hired not because of what I can represent, but because of what I can create, how I can transform, and the power of what I create.”

Still, Isaac has eyes and ears and exists in the year 2018 with the rest of us. “I’m not an idiot,” he adds. “And I know that we live in a politically charged time. There’s so much terrible language, particularly right now, being used against Latinos as a kind of political weapon.” He recognizes, too, the necessity “for people to see people that look like them, because that’s a very inspiring thing.”

As a kid, Isaac looked up to Raúl Juliá, the Puerto Rican-born actor and Broadway star whose breakthrough movie role came as Gomez Addams of the ’90s Addams Family films. “But I looked up to him particularly because he was a Latino that wasn’t being pigeonholed just in Latino parts,” Isaac adds.

“I do think there is a separation between the artist and the art form, between a craftsperson and the craft,” he says, applying the difference in this context to himself. He calls it “that double thing,” as apt a term as any for that peculiar, precise tension: “Like yes, I am who I am, I came from where I come from. But my interest isn’t just in showing people stuff about myself, because I don’t find me to be all that interesting.”

“What is more interesting to me is the work that I’m able to do, and all that time that I spent learning how to do Shakespeare and how to break down plays and try to create a character and do accents,” he says. “That, for me, is what’s fun.”

But it’s always that “double thing”—reconciling two pulls and finding a way not to get torn up. He wants American Latinos “to know, to be proud that there is someone from there that is out and doing work and being recognized not just for being a Latino that’s been able to do that.” On the other hand, he’s “just like any artist who’s out there doing something. I feel like that’s…” He pauses. “That’s also something to be proud of, you know?”

Isaac’s focus lands on me again. “And I think for you too, you’re a writer and that’s what you do. Your identity is also part of that, but I think that you want the work to stand on its own, too.” His sister is “an incredible scientist. She’s at the forefront of climate change and particularly how it affects Latino communities and low-income areas. And she is a Latina scientist, but she’s a scientist, you know? She’s a great scientist without the qualifier of where she’s from. And that’s also very important.”

Paul Gauguin’s life after van Gogh’s death by gunshot at 37 revealed more repugnant depths than his dick-ish insensitivity.

He defected from Paris again, this time to the South Pacific, determined to break from the staid art scene once and for all. He “married” three adolescent brides, two of them 14 years old and the other 13, infecting each girl with syphilis and settling into a private compound he dubbed Maison de Jouir, or “House of Orgasms.” “Pretty gnarly, nasty stuff,” Isaac concedes, though he withholds judgment of the man in his performance onscreen.

To do so might have made his Gauguin—alluring, haughty, insufferable, brilliant—“not quite as complex.” Opposite Willem Dafoe’s divinely wounded depiction of van Gogh, however, he found room to play. “It was interesting to ask, well, what’s the kind of person that would feel that he’s entitled to do those kinds of things?” The man onscreen is an asshole, to be sure, but hardly paints the word “sociopath” onto a canvas. He’s simply human: “I think that anyone has at least the capacity to do” what Gauguin did, Isaac reasons.

The actor has had more than one reason to think on a person’s capacity to do terrible things in the last year. Two men he’s worked with—his Show Me a Hero director, Paul Haggis, and X-Men: Apocalypse helmer Bryan Singer—were both accused of sexual assault in the last year, part of a torrent of unmasked misconduct Hollywood’s Me Too movement brought to national attention.

“It’s a tricky thing,” Isaac says, “because you get offered jobs all the time and, I guess, what’s required now? What kind of background checks can someone do beforehand? There isn’t a ton.” (Just ask Olivia Munn.) “Especially as an actor, to make sure that the people you’re working with, surrounding yourself with, haven’t done something in their past that I guess will make you seem somehow like you’re propping up bad behavior.”

Carefully, he expresses reservations about the phenomenon of the last year. “People don’t feel like they’re getting justice through any kind of legal system, so they take it to the streets,” he ventures. “It’s basically street justice. You have no other option. And what happens when you take it to the streets is that damage occurs, and sometimes people get taken down, things get destroyed that you feel like maybe shouldn’t have.”

“But some of it had to happen, and hopefully now there’ll be more of a system in place to take these things seriously,” he says. “It seems like it is starting to happen more, but then you see things like, how can this person get away with it? How can that person? It just boggles the mind.”

He pulls back again, remembering what’s out of his control.

Tomorrow, he’ll be back in an X-Wing suit, as Poe struggles to accept the same truth. In a year, he’ll be home in New York with his wife and young son, focusing on matters more “real” than Hollywood, its artists, and its art. Whatever he chooses whenever he returns, he’ll be ready—for the critics, the questions, for this new reality.

“All I can do is just do what means something to me,” he says. “You just have to find something honest.” One expects he will.

###

[tardisfireworks]

Conditioning II | Mustafar AU | Star Wars Fanfic

X- posted on Fanfiction.net.

Sequel to Conditioning.

Summary: Queen Amidala had been conditioned to help those in need.  Padmé could not forget that.

Rating: T for dark themes.

Notes: Constructive criticism appreciated.

He was cowering sitting on the floor.

That was the first thing Padmé noticed in the live security holo.

Just like he was when he –

Killed all the Tuskens.

Killed.

It all came back to that word. Anakin (or was he Vader now?) had been broken by what he had done, back on Tatooine.

He had taken great comfort in her voice, and her hugs. He had gotten better.

(Or had he?)

“Padmé.”

It was Obi-Wan’s voice.

“No,” was Padmé’s short reply. “I want to – no, I need to talk to him.”

“Listen, please,” begged Obi-Wan, “Our rebellion depends on you. Palpatine has assumed control of the Galaxy, and –”

“I know what Palpatine’s doing, Obi-Wan,” Padmé said shortly, her voice suddenly sharp. “But Anakin –”

“Anakin’s dead, Padmé. Vader took his place.” Obi-Wan did not elaborate further. The conflict in his voice was obvious.

“He saved your life,” said Padmé. “After endangering it himself, I know,” she added quickly at her friend’s pointed glare.

“That act of heroism – if it can be called that – does not give peace to all the spirits of those who died by his hand,” he deadpanned.

Padmé had no response to this. Instead she shifted her attention to her swollen belly. She could not wait until her child was born, so that she could hold him in her arms, play with him –

Did Anakin not share a part in the future she envisioned for their child?

He doesn’t deserve to, said a voice, he doesn’t deserve to, after what he has done.

Obi-Wan sensed her discomfort.

“I know what’s bothering you, Padmé. But he tried to kill you once –”

“I know, Obi-Wan. I know.” She took a deep breath. “But I think it can’t be put off. I need to see what he has become. To tell it to his face that I – I –”

“I understand. I will talk to Bail about this,” Obi-Wan said, his voice suddenly soft. And then he left the small room that they used as the Rebel base, leaving her alone.

 The first moment when Padmé entered the underground dungeon, she noticed a sort of muffled noise. She didn’t know what it was.

“Anakin,” she said. “I’m here.”

Anakin looked up at her, his eyes bloodshot and hopeless.

“Padmé,” he breathed, his chest heaving. “You came.”

“I did Ani, of course I did.” But she didn’t go near the bars that separated the corridor from the cell.

“I’m sor –”

“Ani,” she cut off coldly, “we both know an apology won’t solve anything. So, please, don’t make this any harder for either of us.”

Anakin (or what was left of him, anyway) gulped and clutched his legs tighter, but Padmé didn’t know whether it was out of frustration or sadness, or a combination of both.

“How is our child?” he asked slowly, carefully.

“He survived,” she said shortly, unable to say anything more.

Anakin closed his eyes and buried his head in his arms again. And then Padmé understood where that muffled noise came from. He was crying.

She knew she had to try. “Obi-Wan told me what you said after you saved his life. Fifty times, really?”

Anakin raised his head. “You try and be his Padawan and then we’ll see how many times you save his life. I felt like I needed to be paid to be his personal life-saver at one point.”

Padmé allowed herself a chuckle.

Then Anakin started laughing.

But it was no longer that charismatic laughter that Anakin Skywalker had been famous for. It was hollow and felt a bit too forced.

He quietened soon after.

“Yoda was here, you know?” Anakin said, after a pause. “I could feel him staring at me. But I couldn’t look at him, Padmé. It hurt too much, knowing what I had done.”

Padmé knew what was coming.

“I know you can’t forgive me Padmé, but please I just need to say this to you:

“I am sorry. There. Done.” There was a hint of bitterness in his voice.

She inched slightly forward. “Who are you now? Anakin Skywalker, or Darth Vader? Jedi or Sith? I need answers, Ani. I can’t just forgive you for this!”

“I know.” And he went back to his silent sobs.

Padmé had said everything she had to say, and yet felt that she needed to stay.

“I know something’s bothering you. You can tell me, you know.”

He didn’t respond.

Padmé didn’t expect him to, either way.

She sat there, on a wooden chair for nearly one half-hour before Anakin said anything at all.

“I didn’t know I knew their names.”

Intrigued, she gently prodded him:

“Sorry?”

“The younglings. Their names, Padmé. They keep haunting me. I can’t think without their screams filling my head … I don’t know what to do!” he tried to yell, but it came off as a growl.

Good, said a voice in Padmé’s head. Remorse is good.

But he’s in pain, she tried to reason with the voice. Shouldn’t I help him?

When you do bad things, remorse is what makes you human again, Padmé. But Anakin Skywalker will never return. He didn’t do bad things. He committed atrocities. He deserves pain.

No, I won’t let anyone hurt him, Padmé thought defiantly. Not even himself.

“Anakin,” she started but Anakin quickly cut her off.

“No. I know what you’re trying to do. Pull me back to the light. I – I  can’t. Padmé, I’m beyond repair. Please, don’t.”

She respected his wishes. “I’ll be back.”

And then, with a swirl of a cloak, she left.

  Obi-Wan was waiting in the meeting room for her.

“How is he?”

“Physically – fine. Mentally – bad.”

Obi-Wan let out a frustrated sigh. “I wasn’t asking for that,” he said. “Did he –”

Padmé turned away from him. “He did,” she managed. How could she convey what had happened in words? How could she explain to him the kind of mess Anakin had become?

A pregnant pause followed.

And then –

She felt it. Contractions. She turned to look at a concerned Obi-Wan in his eyes. “I think I’m in labour.”

 “It’s a boy,” said the monotonous medical droid, after many hours of labour.

Hah, Anakin. Take that. I was right. She allowed herself this small victory. She knew there was another, though.

Obi-Wan held her son close to her.

“Luke,” she breathed. Her son. Her Luke. She felt his soft, fragile arm. She felt stronger.

And then she felt it again. Contractions.

Soon after –

“It’s a girl.”

The droid held her daughter towards her.

“Leia,” she whispered.

And then she passed out. The last thing she heard were her children’s cry.

  She woke up a few hours later.  Her children were by her bedside, soundly sleeping. They warmed her up from inside out. Made her feel less scared for the future.

Just as she tried to lift herself up into a sitting position, a voice came calling out for her.

It was Anakin.

She turned to face him. But he struggled to walk and his wrists were cuffed. He was guarded by Yoda and Obi-Wan. She snapped back into reality. This was not the Anakin she had married. This was not the Anakin that foolishly tried to show off in a truly teenage fashion. This was not him.

But Queen Amidala had been conditioned to help those in need. Padmé could not forget that.

And so she allowed herself a smile – a particularly strained one, but it was still a smile.

Yoda and Obi-Wan stayed outside, but kept a close eye on Anakin, who staggered weakly towards her.

“I hope you know that we both were right?” she asked. “We have a son and a daughter. But I was right first.”

Anakin looked like he wanted to say something, but then he rushed to his children, who slept without a care.

“What are their names?” He whispered softly.

“Luke and Leia,” she told him. She could tell him that they were “Luke and Leia Naberrie” later.

He knelt beside her with great difficulty. “How are you? Are you still in pain?”

She shook her head.

Anakin smiled.

It was probably the closest thing to that lopsided grin she was familiar with, but it wasn’t close enough.

But then she realised it was a long road to recovery. She decided it was enough for today.

[dweemeister]

My alternative 90th Academy Awards

So here’s another annual tradition... my alternative Oscars ceremony. This is what this Sunday’s Oscars would look like if I – and I alone – stuffed the ballots and decided on all of the nominations and winners. Non-English language films are accompanied by their nation of origin (in FIFA three-letter code).

90th Academy Awards – March 4, 2018 Dolby Theatre – Hollywood, Los Angeles, California Host: Jimmy Kimmel Broadcaster: ABC

Best Picture: LADY BIRD

The Breadwinner, Anthony Leo, Tomm Moore, Andrew Rosen, and Paul Young (Cartoon Saloon/GKIDS)

Call Me by Your Name, Peter Spears, Luca Guadagnino, Emilie Georges, Rodrigo Teixeira, Marco Morabito, James Ivory, and Howard Rosenman (Sony Pictures Classics)

Coco, Darla K. Anderson (Pixar/Walt Disney)

Dunkirk, Emma Thomas and Christopher Nolan (Warner Bros.)

Faces Places (FRA), Rosalie Varda (Le Pacte/Cohen Media Group)

The Florida Project, Sean Baker, Chris Bergoch, Kevin Chinoy, Andrew Duncan, Alex Saks, Francesca Silvestri, and Shih-Ching Tsou (A24)

Lady Bird, Scott Rudin, Eli Bush, and Evelyn O’Neil (A24)

Phantom Thread, Paul Thomas Anderson, Megan Ellison, JoAnne Sellar, and Daniel Lupi, (Focus/Universal)

The Post, Steven Spielberg, Kristie Macosko Krieger, and Amy Pascal (20th Century Fox)

The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro and J. Miles Dale (Fox Searchlight Pictures)

Out of the running in real life are Darkest Hour, Three Billboards, and Get Out. And taking the maximum of ten spots, in their place enter The Breadwinner, Coco, Faces Places, The Florida Project. That’s two animated movies, a documentary, and a neglected critical darling... come at me? I was lukewarm over Darkest Hour, pissed off over Three Billboards, and I honestly don’t think Get Out is as effective a horror movie or a commentary on racial relations that it wants to be.

Lady Bird would be my winner, with Phantom Thread your runner-up and either Faces Places or The Shape of Water as your third spot. For Lady Bird, it would be harder to find a movie with as much empathy as it this calendar year. Maybe not the most technically gifted filmmaking of the nominees, but it accomplishes its conceit with an open ear and an open heart. Bravo.

I noticed that I don’t have time to write on all the Best Picture nominees anymore, like in years past. I only got to Dunkirk and The Post  – both of which are on the outside looking in.

Best Director

Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water

Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird

Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk

Dee Rees, Mudbound

Agnès Varda and JR, Faces Places

CONTROVERSY. Dee Rees nominated in Director, but Mudbound isn’t nominated for Picture! In all honesty, I couldn’t find the excuse to nudge Mudbound out for any of the nominees I placed above. But to focus on the positive, del Toro is going to make it three Mexican Best Director winners in the last four years... that is exhilarating. Nolan is my close second choice here, and falters a bit because I didn’t personally enjoy the structure of Dunkirk all that much.

Best Actor

Timothée Chalamet, Call Me by Your Name

Daniel Day-Lewis, Phantom Thread

Daniel Kaluuya, Get Out

Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour

Andy Serkis, War for the Planet of the Apes                               

No CMBYN fans, there will not be any justice for you on my blog either. Because the best performance of the year by an actor of a leading role was done in motion capture... it was Andy Serkis as Caesar in War for the Planet of the Apes. It’s been high time to honor Serkis in what is his best work – aside from his performances as Gollum – to date.

Best Actress

Ahn Seo-hyun, Okja

Sally Hawkins, The Shape of Water

Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Saoirse Ronan, Lady Bird

Meryl Streep, The Post

The quieter performances aren’t going to win at this year’s Oscars. McDormand’s flashier performance in Three Billboards will overshadow Hawkins’ nuanced, silent performance in SoW. That’s wrong to me, as I think Hawkins does so much physically that is so taxing for any actor that would dare take a role like that. South Korean child actress Ahn Seo-hyun just sneaks in for Okja.

Best Supporting Actor

Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project

Woody Harrelson, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Richard Jenkins, The Shape of Water

Bob Odenkirk, The Post

Christopher Plummer, All the Money in the World

My least favorite acting category this year. So I’ll toss it to Dafoe for The Florida Project... who, on Sunday, is probably going to lose to a flashier performance in Sam Rockwell for Three Billboards (who shouldn’t have been nominated). Plummer and Odenkirk are in a close battle for second.

Best Supporting Actress

Mary J. Blige, Mudbound

Tiffany Haddish, Girls Trip

Allison Janney, I, Tonya

Lesley Manville, Phantom Thread

Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird

This is Manville v. Metcalf for me. And for playing the deeply layered, deeply conflicted, tough-love mother in Lady Bird, this has to be Metcalf for me. It is ta transcendent supporting actress performance. And yes, I snuck Tiffany Haddish in here... because why not?

Best Adapted Screenplay

James Ivory, Call Me by Your Name

Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, The Disaster Artist

Scott Frank, James Mangold, and Michael Green, Logan

Dee Rees and Virgil Williams, Mudbound

Aaron Sorkin, Molly’s Game

If I ran the Oscars, the 89-year-old James Ivory wouldn’t have won an Oscar by now either. I hate to type that, but timing is a funny thing! Fate and time are funny things, aren’t they? This category isn’t close. Dee Rees makes history as the first nominated black woman in this category!

Best Original Screenplay

Paul Thomas Anderson, Phantom Thread

Sean Baker and Chris Bergoch, The Florida Project

Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird

Liz Hannah and Josh Singer, The Post

Jordan Peele, Get Out

I’ve already commented how much I think Get Out is more flawed a movie than most believe. This comes down to Anderson and Gerwig for me... and my Best Picture winner, I think, is blessed with the screenplay of the year for capturing a time, a place, and its characters at a certain point in their lives so wonderfully.

Best Animated Feature

The Breadwinner (Cartoon Saloon/GKIDS)

Coco (Pixar/Walt Disney)

The Girl Without Hands, France (Shellac/GKIDS)

Loving Vincent (Next Film/Good Deed Entertainment)

Mary and the Witch’s Flower, Japan (Studio Ponoc/GKIDS)

SHOCKER. For me, I was considering a tie in this category (which has happened six times in Academy Awards history... so I guess I have to save it for once every fifteen ceremonies or something) between Breadwinner (write-up) and Coco (write-up). This would be Cartoon Saloon’s first win in my alternate universe... in that same alternative universe for 2009, The Secret of Kells would’ve lost to Up; for 2014, Song of the Sea would’ve lost to eventual Best Picture winner The Tale of the Princess Kaguya.

Coco fans, don’t despair though. Keep reading... because your movie isn’t going home empty-handed.

I totally disrespected Ferdinand and Boss Baby didn’t I?

Best Documentary Feature

Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (Kartemquin Films/Public Broadcasting Service)

Faces Places, France (Le Pacte/Cohen Media Group)

Jane (National Geographic)

LA92 (National Geographic)

Last Men in Aleppo (Aleppo Media Center/Larm Film/Grasshopper Film)

I don’t think this would be Agnès Varda’s first Oscar in my alternative universe? I’ll get to doing the 1960s someday. :P

Best Foreign Language Film

Faces Places, France

The Insult, Lebanon

Loveless, Russia

Mary and the Witch’s Flower, Japan

The Square, Sweden

Best Cinematography

Roger Deakins, Blade Runner 2049

Janusz Kaminski, The Post

Rachel Morrison, Mudbound

Jonathan Ricquebourg, The Death of Louis XIV (FRA)

Hoyte Van Hoytema, Dunkirk

Morrison makes history by being the first female nominee in this category and as its first winner. Sorry Roger Deakins! You probably would’ve won earlier in my alternative universe anyways.

Best Film Editing

Michael Kahn, The Post

Paul Machliss and Jonathan Amos, Baby Driver

Gregory Plotkin, Get Out

Lee Smith, Dunkirk

Sidney Wolinsky, The Shape of Water

Best Original Musical*

M.M. Keeravani, Baahubali 2: The Conclusion

Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Coco

Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, The Greatest Showman

*NOTE: Best Original Musical – known previously as several other names – exists in the Academy’s rulebooks, but requires activation from the music branch given that there are enough eligible films. To qualify, a film must have no fewer than five original songs. This category was last activated when Prince won for Purple Rain (1984).

You know, this might change some day if I sit down and watch Baahubali 2. I’ve listened to the soundtrack, but I haven’t seen the songs in context. Sorry Indian cinema fans! Coco fans must be getting mighty mad at me for now... but Coco’s musical score – outside of two original songs (“Remember Me” and “Proud Corazón”) and one non-original song (“La Llorana”) – isn’t the best out of context. The Greatest Showman – I think Pasek and Paul are far better lyricists than they are composers (and yes, that’s a problem) – has songs that do very well in and out of context, and takes the win in this category.

Best Original Score

Alexandre Desplat, The Shape of Water

Alexandre Desplat, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Michael Giacchino, War for the Planet of the Apes

John Williams, The Post

John Williams, Star Wars: The Last Jedi

It really comes down to Valerian, Apes, and Jedi. And in this titanic battle over science fiction and space opera, it is Desplat for the much-maligned Valerian taking the Oscar home. The score combines seamlessly enormous orchestral and electronic elements to a degree that I haven’t heard from Desplat yet. It barely edges Williams for The Last Jedi... which benefits from some of Williams’ best action scoring in years and a repackaging of older themes in ways showing off the dexterity of the maestro. Giacchino is third, with Desplat for SoW in fourth, and The Post in fifth. Jonny Greenwood for Phantom Thread is the first man out.

Best Original Song

“Mighty River”, music by Raphael Saadiq; lyrics by Mary J. Blige, Saadiq, and Taura Stinson, Mudbound

“A Million Dreams”, music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, The Greatest Showman

“Mystery of Love”, music and lyrics by Sufjan Stevens, Call Me by Your Name

“Remember Me (Recuérdame)”, music and lyrics by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, Coco

“This Is Me”, music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, The Greatest Showman

Also proudly the winner of the 2017 Movie Odyssey Award for Best Original Song (some of you know what that means), “Remember Me (Recuérdame)” has everything you want – interesting musicality (even though I still think that descending line, which begins with “For ever if I’m far away / I hold you in my heart” sounds far more like something Randy Newman would compose than something distinctly Mexican) meaningful lyrics, layers of meaning within the movie it comes from, and a life of its own when separated from that movie.

Showstopper “This Is Me” comes a distant second, with the others in a scrum for crumbs. I really like “A Million Dreams”, though. My sister will take me to task over how much I enjoyed The Greatest Showman’s soundtrack (which I enjoyed despite finding it musically uninteresting).

Best Costume Design

Jacqueline Durran, Beauty and the Beast

Jen Wasson, The Beguiled

Nina Avramovic, The Death of Louis XIV

Mark Bridges, Phantom Thread

Luis Sequeira, The Shape of Water

Best Makeup & Hairstyling

Kazuhiro Tsuji, David Malinowski, and Lucy Sibbick, Darkest Hour

John Blake and Camille Friend, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Neal Scanlan and Peter King, Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Thi Thanh Tu Nguyen and Félix Puget, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Arjen Tuiten, Wonder

Best Production Design

Dennis Gassner and Alessandra Querzola, Blade Runner 2049

Jim Clay and Rebecca Alleway, Murder on the Orient Express

Paul Denham Austerberry, Shane Vieau, and Jeff Melvin, The Shape of Water

Hugues Tissandier, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Aline Bonetto and Dominic Hyman, Wonder Woman

Best Sound Editing

Mark Mangini and Theo Green, Blade Runner 2049

Richard King and Alex Gibson, Dunkirk

Al Nelson and Steve Slanec, Kong: Skull Island

Matthew Wood and Ren Klyce, Star Wars: The Last Jedi

James Mather, Wonder Woman

Best Sound Mixing

Julian Slater, Tim Cavagin, and Mary H. Ellis, Baby Driver

Ron Bartlett, Doug Hemphill, and Mac Ruth, Blade Runner 2049

Mark Weingarten, Gregg Landaker, and Gary A. Rizzo, Dunkirk

Christian Cooke, Brad Zoern, and Glen Gauthier, The Shape of Water

David Parker, Michael Semanick, Ren Klyce, and Stuart Wilson, Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Best Visual Effects

John Nelson, Gerd Nefzer, Paul Lambert, and Richard R. Hoover, Blade Runner 2049

Scott Fisher and Andrew Jackson, Dunkirk

Ben Morris, Mike Mulholland, Neal Scanlan, and Chris Corbould, Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Scott Stokdyk and Jérome Lionard, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Joe Letteri, Daniel Barrett, Dan Lemmon, and Joel Whist, War for the Planet of the Apes

Best Documentary Short

Edith+Eddie (Kartemquin Films)

Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405 (Frank Stiefel)

Heroine(e) (Requisite Media/Netflix)

Knife Skills (Thomas Lennon Films)

Traffic Stop (Q-Ball Productions/HBO Films)

My omnibus review of this year’s nominees can be read here.

Best Live Action Short

DeKalb Elementary (Reed Van Dyk)

The Eleven O’Clock (FINCH)

My Nephew Emmett (Kevin Wilson, Jr.)

The Silent Child (Slick Films)

Watu Wote: All of Us, Germany/Kenya (Ginger Ink Films/Hamburg Media School)

My omnibus review of this year’s nominees can be read here.

Best Animated Short

Dear Basketball (Glen Keane Productions)

In a Heartbeat (Ringling College of Art and Design)

Lou (Pixar/Walt Disney)

Revolting Rhymes (Magic Light Pictures/Triggerfish Animation Studios/BBC)

World of Tomorrow Episode Two: The Burden of Other People’s Thoughts (Bitter Films)

My omnibus review of this year’s nominees can be read here. I took out Negative Space and Garden Party for my winner In a Heartbeat and World of Tomorrow Episode Two. If you haven’t seen In a Heartbeat yet... first, where the hell have you been? Under a rock? Here’s the link.

Academy Honorary Awards: Agnès Varda, Charles Burnett, Donald Sutherland, and Owen Roizman

Special Achievement Academy Award: Alejandro González Iñárritu, Flesh and Sand

MULTIPLE NOMINEES (22) Nine: The Shape of Water Seven: Dunkirk; The Post Six: Phantom Thread Five: Blade Runner 2049; Lady Bird; Mudbound; Star Wars: The Last Jedi Four: Call Me by Your Name; Coco; Faces Places; Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets Three: The Florida Project; Get Out; The Greatest Showman; War for the Planet of the Apes Two: Baby Driver; The Breadwinner; Darkest Hour; The Death of Louis XIV; Mary and the Witch’s Flower; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; Wonder Woman

WINNERS 4 wins: The Shape of Water 3 wins: Lady Bird 2 wins: Dunkirk; Faces Places; Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets; War for the Planet of the Apes 1 win: The Breadwinner; Call Me by Your Name; Coco; DeKalb Elementary; The Florida Project; The Greatest Showman; In a Heartbeat; Knife Skills; Mudbound; Phantom Thread

16 winners from 25 categories. 45 feature-length films and 15 short films were represented.

Questions? Comments? Personal attacks? Fire away!